Eleven years ago, I coined a term. I called them the photo generation. The piece ran on Kaptur in April 2015, prompted by a Facebook study: 53% of US teens said Instagram helped define who they were, 63% used it to document their lives, and a third checked it beforeContinue Reading
India has implemented a new rule mandating media platforms to label AI-generated content and retain metadata, effective February 20. This regulation reflects a broader trend alongside similar policies in China and the EU, emphasizing the importance of metadata for compliance and authenticity. Platforms must adapt quickly to avoid penalties.Continue Reading
The promise is seductive: generate product photography in seconds, automate image editing at scale, produce marketing visuals without the overhead of traditional production. Generative AI tools for visual content have moved from experimental curiosity to operational necessity faster than most compliance frameworks can adapt. If your organizationContinue Reading
Cloudflare acquired Human Native on January 15, 2026. The London startup had built a marketplace connecting content owners with AI companies seeking training data. The deal completes an 18-month infrastructure build, but the strategic question remains: is Cloudflare operating a toll booth that charges for passage, a warehouse that aggregatesContinue Reading
You can listen to the article here ( ~ 15 minutes): For 150 years, photography’s power rested on a simple fact: cameras don’t explain, they describe. Now we’re building systems that do both, and the implications for everyone who creates, manages, or verifies visual content are just starting toContinue Reading
The End of Visual Evidence It’s a few years from now. A photo surfaces of something that matters: a protest, an accident, a natural disaster. You watch it. You feel something. You assume it’s fake. You scroll past. The photograph might be real. Someone might have captured a genuine momentContinue Reading
AI Everywhere, But Not All the Time Every October in San Francisco, where robot taxis are busily roaming the streets, something peculiar happens. The photography industry’s old guard—print manufacturers, stock agencies, software makers—sits down with its new blood: the brilliant engineers building AI-powered photo services, mobile apps, editing tools, andContinue Reading
So, What Do We Mean by “Authentic”? The word has been bounced around a lot lately. Understandably. But under different keyboards, it means entirely different things. We’re using one word for two very different ideas. The “Authentic” Feeling Who talks about authenticity? Marketers. They are painfully obsessed with connecting withContinue Reading
The industry finally stopped theorizing and started building the infrastructure to preserve truth itself We’ve reached the inflection point. Not the one we’ll read about in retrospect, but the one happening right now—where the exponential flood of AI-generated content threatens to drown out any meaningful signal of authenticity. The WorldContinue Reading
The evolution from cave paintings to written text took millennia. The return journey might just be around the corner Human communication began with images. Long before the first written word, our ancestors painted scenes on cave walls, not as decoration, but as visual communication systems that conveyed complex ideas aboutContinue Reading